The QP7 (2016) conference was a milestone for change in the Cayman Islands. But what is holding back legal progress in the British Overseas Territories? And why is the most powerful LGBT advocacy group in the UK, Stonewall, silent? INCISE Caribbean LGBT rights project leader Leo Raznovich comments.

The UK government is failing to secure good governance and to uphold the rule of law in its British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean with respect to preventing discrimination against LGBTI people. This is now well documented and has been previously reported here. These failures by the UK Government stand in stark contrast to:

the approach taken by the US, France and the Netherlands, each of which have extended equality and harmonised basic rights for all their LGBTI people throughout their dependent territories in the Caribbean region; and

the rights secured by the American human rights system, which since January this year requires marriage equality and unhindered official recognition of one’s gender identity in all countries where the Inter American Convention on Human Rights applies (23 countries in total) pursuant to an advisory decision of the Inter American Court of Human Rights OC 24/17 issued at the request of Costa Rica.

Furthermore, the UK’s failures constitute breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which after Oliari v Italy (ECtHR, 21 July 2015) requires that all countries to which the ECHR applies provide a legal framework for same-sex couples. This legal requirement includes the British Overseas Territories to which the ECHR has been extended.

The rights of LGBTI people in the Caribbean British Overseas Territories are failing to be protected and failing to be advanced in accordance with applicable international law, directly as a result of the UK’s refusal to act, the UK’s refusal to secure good governance and the UK’s refusal to uphold the rule of law. The UK is arguably, therefore, complicit with certain of its British Overseas Territories in their illegal discrimination, oppression and segregation of LGBTI people. The UK’s preference is to support the majority rather than protect the minority from the illegal discrimination, oppression and segregation that they suffer. The UK is holding these countries back with the result that there is now a huge disparity between the rights of its LGBTI citizens in the UK vs its British LGBTI citizens in its other territories. To be clear, these territories, although largely self-governing, are part of the UK and their people are British citizens and have been extended the rights and protections afforded under the ECHR, yet the UK wilfully allows the rights and protections of these British LGBTI people to be breached. Unfortunately, notwithstanding that the British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean are geographically within the American continent (which is actively progressing LGBTI rights), they do not benefit from the American human rights system because politically they are part of the UK. The consequence: British Overseas Territory LGBTI persons are some of the least protected and most oppressed and segregated people in the Western Hemisphere.

In light of the foregoing, one would have thought that this situation would prompt an organisation such as Stonewall to effect the purpose of its existence and to seek to bring about some positive change. As will be seen below, astonishingly this seems not to be the case. In fact, Stonewall refuses to get involved notwithstanding its knowledge of these breaches of international human rights in the UK’s British Overseas Territories. I shall give two documented examples that evidence this appalling attitude of Stonewall.

Incitement to violence and sexual hatred against the LGBTI community by senior politicians of the Cayman Islands

In August 2015, senior politicians of the Cayman Islands incited violence and sexual hatred against the LGBTI community, avoiding prosecution by hiding behind parliamentary immunity privileges, by making the following statements in the local legislature:

describing homosexuality as a ‘deviant behavior’, ‘wicked and immoral’ and a ‘social and moral evil’;

threatening violence towards homosexuals; and

making remarks that equated homosexuality with bestiality and paedophilia, including suggestions that ‘crushing a baby’s skull and sucking their brains out had become a human right’. ‘MLA calls homosexuals evil’ in Cayman News Service (17 August 2015), available here.

The Rt Hon Anna Soubry MP and Helen Grant MP wrote a joint letter to Ruth Hunt, the Chief Executive of Stonewall, regarding, inter alia, the rather ‘disturbing’ (SIC) debate in the Legislative Assembly on the motion to reaffirm marriage as between a man and a woman. This letter was sent on 6 November 2015 (a copy is attached) and, to the author’s knowledge, neither Ruth Hunt nor Stonewall ever replied to it, or even condemned those remarks.

Petition to HM the Queen for the ECHR to be complied with by Her government

In September 2016, Colours Cayman, an LGBTI grassroots group of the Cayman Islands, petitioned the UK government, via the Governor of the Cayman Islands, for an Order in Council so that local legislation can be corrected and made to comply with the ECHR and its court’s judgments in order to bring about some equality to the LGBTI people of the British Overseas Territories. The UK government has refused to act regardless of its constitutional powers and its international legal obligations to do so.

Stonewall was approached again in this instance and on 25 January 2017, Alysha Khambay replied that Stonewall ‘won’t be able to do anything’ (copy of the correspondence on file with author).

The silence of Stonewall and its Chief Executive Ruth Hunt in the face of arguably criminal actions being committed by state officials in the Cayman Islands against LGBTI individual must not remain unnoticed; neither should be its decision of not assisting the British Overseas Territories people, British citizens as well, in their fight against the UK government for LGBTI equality, when the very purpose of this organisation is to fight for equality and to help protect British LGBTI people from discrimination.

Further (and ongoing) discrimination and human rights violations against British LGBTI people

During 2017, further serious violations of LGBTI rights have been taking place in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands; in brief:

The Bermuda Legislature has recently passed a Bill the effect of which is to cancel the judgment of the Supreme Court of the jurisdiction that has established that marriage in Bermuda must be available to same-sex couples (see Godwin-DeRoche v The Registrar General et al (5 May 2017)) under existing Bermudian Law. The Governor of Bermuda, who is appointed and takes instruction from the British government, has under section 35 of the Constitution of Bermuda the power to withhold assent or, at the very least, to refer the Bill to London for the British government to make a decision. We understand that the British government is not going to instruct the Governor of Bermuda to exercise any of these constitutional powers. When the bill becomes law, it will result in the withdrawal of legally established rights from a section of the Bermudian population. This would amount to legal segregation of LGBTI people, similar in kind to the legal segregation imposed by the Nazi regime on the Jewish community at the beginning of their governance in the 1930s when Jews were banned to marry after having enjoyed such a right under German civil law.

In the Cayman Islands, the Immigration Authority has rejected, in at least two different instances, one on 27 July 2017 and the other on 23 October 2017, the applications of married same-sex couples to be granted, in each case, the right to reside in the Cayman Islands as the spouse of a Caymanian. The grounds of such rejection are exceptionally concerning. The Immigration Authority decided that its own precedent set in July 2016, when it was allowed a same-sex spouse of a foreign worker to reside in the Cayman Islands as a dependant, does not extend to benefit Caymanian nationals. The practical effect of this rejection is that the Immigration Authority is deporting LGBTI Caymanians. They have no option but to live overseas, in countries where they are permitted to reside as a family unit. This may sound unconscionable, but it’s the appalling effect of the rejection, which in addition is in breach of the ECHR’s unanimous decision in Taddeucci and McCall v. Italy (ECtHR, 30 June 2016).

These serious breaches of LGBTI rights evidence more than just a failure of these British Overseas Territories to comply with the ECHR. They, along with those that took place in 2015 and 2016, which Stonewall decided to ignore, evidence an attitude of the UK with respect to its British Overseas Territories that demonstrates the UK government has no respect for human rights in its overseas territories, particularly in the Caribbean. Even though the UK has the constitutional powers and the legal duty to stop or redress these breaches, the UK chooses to do nothing with the complicity of Stonewall who also chooses to do nothing.

Stonewall has, now, once more the opportunity to show that they do in fact care for LGBTI people more than its alliance with the British Government. Is Ruth Hunt going to keep her head in the sand, or actively seek to assist Bermudian, Caymanian and other LGBTI people in the UK’s territories?

Dr Leonardo J Raznovich, Barrister
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Visiting Senior Research FellowIntersectional Centre for Inclusion and Social Justice (INCISE)
Canterbury Christ Church University
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Co-Vice Chair of the LGBTI Law Committee of the International Bar Association (IBA)

Queer(y)ing Justice in the Global South
11-13 July 2018, University of Sydney, Australia

Recent years have seen social, criminal, and legal justice campaigns for sexuality and gender diverse people gain increasing visibility and popular support in many jurisdictions, while repression and discrimination have increased in others. At the same time, academic LGBT and queer scholarship in fields such as criminology, criminal justice studies, sociology, and socio-legal studies, has grown significantly.

Despite reversals of enfranchisement for sexuality and gender diverse people in some countries, important changes in the interests of social and legal justice have been achieved, and there is a growing space in some legal and criminal justice contexts for the needs of sexuality and gender diverse people to be recognised. However, more can be done to respond to the intersections of inequalities in these contexts. Culturally diverse people, Indigenous people, and people seeking safety, among others, have not always benefited from these gains. A gulf remains between academia and practitioners in these areas, with greater opportunity to pay attention to the voices of those in the Global South in these debates, and to how ‘Northern’ frameworks guiding research and practice in this area may need to be reconsidered. These issues are central to ongoing campaigns to achieve greater social and criminal justice for sexuality and gender diverse people globally.

To further explore and respond to these issues, and strengthen the international networks of scholars and practitioners working in this area, we invite proposals to speak at an upcoming conference on ‘Queer(y)ing Justice in the Global South’. We hope to question how justice can be ‘queered’ and queried from the perspectives of sexuality and gender diverse people.

We welcome proposals from academics as well as practitioners working in the field. We particularly welcome proposals from those in the Global South. The conference is an opportunity to bring together researchers, community members, and organisations working at the intersections of sexuality, gender diversity, and justice, broadly conceived.

The conference will be held at the University of Sydney, Australia, from 11-13 July 2018. It will include keynote presentations by Dameyon Bonson (Black Rainbow, Australia), Professor Jo Phoenix (Open University, UK), and Dr Jace Valcore (University of Houston Downtown, USA).

We invite abstract submissions for oral presentations, panels, or roundtables at this conference that respond to the above considerations. Abstract submissions should include information about the author(s), their institutional affiliations, their contact details, and a 300 word (maximum) abstract. Abstracts must be submitted by email (queeringjustice@gmail.com) no later than Friday 2 March 2018. Acceptance of an abstract will be advised by Friday 16 March 2018. Selected presentations will also be considered for publication in an edited volume after the symposium.

This conference is being jointly hosted by The Sydney Institute of Criminology (University of Sydney), the Crime and Justice Research Centre (Queensland University of Technology), the Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies (University of Tasmania), and the School of Social Sciences and Psychology (Western Sydney University).

]]>https://queeringparadigms.com/2017/11/06/qp8-global-standards-and-internalized-coloniality-how-feminists-in-russia-see-the-west-vanya-solovey/feed/0schererdevriesQP8: A Poem – In the depth of the politics of experience (in Russian with English subtitles)https://queeringparadigms.com/2017/10/17/qp8-a-poem-in-the-depth-of-the-politics-of-experience-in-russian-with-english-subtitles/
https://queeringparadigms.com/2017/10/17/qp8-a-poem-in-the-depth-of-the-politics-of-experience-in-russian-with-english-subtitles/#respondTue, 17 Oct 2017 08:00:33 +0000http://queeringparadigms.com/?p=738

part VIII of the international conference series Queering Paradigms.

University of Vienna, Department for English and American Studies
20-23 September 2017

Deadline for Proposals: 15 April 2017 (Deadline extended)
send to: qp8@univie.ac.at
homepage http://qp8.univie.ac.atPlease use the special application form on our website!

Lately, much activist work, in the global North/West and beyond, has been done under the banner of Queer Solidarity. Much of this solidarity targets human rights violations, homo- and trans*phobia in regions, far away from the north/western metropolitan areas where street protests fight the ‘antihomosexual propaganda law’ in Russia, the re-criminalization of same-sex relationships in India or against homophobic violence in Uganda.

Solidarity was and is a key concept in anticapitalist, Marxist, socialist, workers movements and materialist critique as well as in movements critically questioning globalization. Today, queer solidarity movements seem to have lost these roots within the class struggle and seem less concerned with neoliberal development, globalization, labor conditions (including sexualized and gendered labor), the continuation of colonial exploitation etc. With our conference we want to take a closer look at the current performances of queer solidarity, especially towards the post-soviet context.
What does it mean to perform queer solidarity? Which concepts of solidarity do these movements bring forward? What is queer solidarity for? Who are the recipients of queer solidarity? What are the values of queer solidarity? And what is the motivation for this solidarity?
Many postcolonial and decolonial scholars point to the hegemonies of contemporary queer solidarity movements and the erotic, sexually libidinous aspect of solidarity. They highlight the unequal distribution of privilege and power, between the benevolent donors and the recipients of solidarity, the privileges to ‘afford’ solidarity. Following this line of thought, we want to ask about queer solidarity towards post-soviet subjects, the hegemonies and different levels of vulnerability within queer solidarity alliances. Taking the diversity of the post-soviet spaces seriously, we challenge the Western Gaze of queer activism on the post-soviet space that projects whiteness and inferiority, questioning the motives and ethics of queer solidarity practices. Especially activists, artists and scholars working on and within the post-soviet and post-socialist context have long pointed to the problematic practices of white tourism in the name of queer solidarity, that strongly overlaps with forms of exoticizing and sometimes even sex tourism. Can ‘fucking’ really be a form of solidarity? Or asked differently, under what conditions can fucking be solidarity?

Further, we ask about the appropriate concepts to question phenomena such as north/western hegemonies, post-soviet subalternity as well as Russian coloniality or imperialism etc.
With Fucking Solidarity we strongly built on and include the critique of post-soviet queer activists and artists. Speaking from and in solidarity with the post-soviet perspective, we want or need to queer the actors of queer solidarity, blurring the lines between the ‘recipients’ and ‘agents’, the ‘giving’ and ‘taking’. As queer post-soviet migrants within North/Western Europe, many of us are both, those who receive as well as those who give solidarity.
With our conference ‘Fucking Solidarity’, we ask for the possibilities, gains and limits of (our) queer solidarity. We want to ‘fuck’ with the idea, the theories, the practices and the art of solidarity, from different angles, different spaces, from and with different groups. Investigating into the erotics of queer solidarity, their drives, and desires behind it, we reflect on hegemonies and the possibility for anti-hierarchical or empowerment. We are interested in the possibilities of queering existing concepts and practices of solidarity, especially those solidarity approaches towards the post-soviet/post-socialist and postcolonial spaces and their respective inhabitants.
Fucking Solidarity is interested in constructive criticism. We hope to learn about new approaches and ways of solidarity, from queer-feminist, anti-racist, anti-hierarchical, horizontal, inclusive, “check-your-privilege”, decolonizing perspectives.As it is tradition in the Queering Paradigms series, a part of the conference is reserved for contributions that cover a broad spectrum of queer topics, beyond the focus on queer solidarity and post-soviet perspectives.

Abstract Proposals:

We accept proposals for many different styles and formats: 20 minutes presentations, poster presentations, workshops, exhibitions, round tables, open discussions, parties, performances, videos, lecture-performances.
Conference languages are Russian and English.
As organizers, we try our best to provide an accessible space, and ask our presenters to make their presentations as easy accessible as possible. All conference venues will be wheelchair-accessible.
All conference food will be vegan, and preferably fair-trade.
Invited are all activists, artists, workers, independent researchers as well as academics from all levels of their career, who are interested in the topic of queer solidarity.
Please send us a 350-word abstract with a topic, main ideas and format of your input as well as a 150-word short-biography. Deadline for Proposals is 15 April 2017 (deadline extended!). Please send your abstract to: qp8@univie.ac.at Please use the special application form on our website!

The organizers:

We, as a collective, understand this event as an anti-conference-gathering; in a sense an intervention into the white cis-gender male dominated space of West-European academia.
We do not seek to find universal concepts and ideas, but discuss pluriversal approaches to complicated and yet simple interconnections of queerness, solidarity, space and power. Being simultaneously similar and different, privileged and disadvantaged, illegally illegitimate and lawfully legit, included, rejected, hated, tolerated, celebrated, despised, praised- queer, kvir, kwir, квiр, квир…
We want to empower “ourselves” and “others” in a collective attempt to rethink and reframe queer knowledge production in/from/about post-soviet/post-socialist/post-colonial spaces within a respectful dissensus framework.
Oh, and also we just want to spend some fabulous time together, celebrating the hedonism queer is made of. Food, drinks, music, partying as well as time and space for relaxing and talking are an essential part of the program.

A word about Finances:

Fucking Solidarity is an attempt to share and redistribute resources as much as possible. To do so we need our participants’ help!
Please let us know what financial background you have and if you can afford to pay for your travel expenses and accommodation in Vienna, or if you need our support to do so.
For those of you, who come from North/Western institutions that support you with travel grants etc. we ask a fee between 50€ (minimum junior scholars) and 100€ (senior scholars with good income).
This money will be spent to pay the travel expenses from scholars, activists and artists from the global South and global East, whose institutions do not support their participation in such an event.
All the conference food will be provided and we will organize private (free) accommodations for those who need it. No one will be turned away for the lack of funding and we try to get as much sponsoring as possible.homepagehttp://qp8.univie.ac.at